Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Full Page Ad in Wired Magazine - Rather Unsuitably Timed

The Electronic Frontier Foundation placed this full ad in Wired Magazine's January 2017 issue.

Since Barack Obama officially transferred control of ICANN to an "international governing body" effective October 1, 2016, isn't this doomsday-panic-time ad in the January 2017 magazine a bit late? Haven't the giveaways that grew out of Obama's fetish with globalization made the claim that our "threat model has changed" a bit disingenuous?

Control of the internet addressing system had been in the hands of the US Department of Commerce since 1998. Then, the US government gave ICANN, a non-profit in Los Angeles, the authority to run things. ICANN oversaw domain names for websites and individual IP addresses for internet users until its contract with the US Dept of Commerce ran out on Sept 30 2016. It still does the same thing but now has an international overseer.

The questions that EFF should be asking, now, in this winter of our discontent, is what community or governance poses a greater threat to the common man and his use of the internet? An international one made up of many governments and many corporations? Or the US government? Before you answer, better look at the list of overseers in this link, which details the members of the Governmental Advisory Committee to ICANN. Its membership most definitely does not make me feel better. https://gacweb.icann.org/display/gacweb/GAC+Representatives

I love the idea of a surveillance-free web but I'm not fool enough to believe that we actually have one. Of course, the encrypt/delete/reveal advice that EFF offers in this ad is excellent and everyone should be doing these things to protect themselves, but these actions should have been taken post-Snowden, not post-Trump.

Anyway, ICANN does not control content. Main stream media and Facebook do this for us. I'd like to see a big ad in Wired Magazine on how we can remedy that sad fact.